Working Daze by John Zakour and Scott Roberts for May 13, 2022

Bah, a real youngster! IBM 1130s had sense lights and switches! (And some of the physics undergrads learned how to do some pretty neat pranks with them)

It is ever thus. The way every generation learned something has always been better than whatever the newest generation is being taught about the subject. We always prefer what we already know. It’s meaningless. As long as the answer is correct, who cares how the engineer arrived at it?

The first computer I programmed used an ASR33 teletype for the keyboard.

…uphill both ways, in the snow!

I like the “dual processor” setup of the old guy.

oooh—“jamjillion”—a new unit! Is it more, or less, than a metric bonkers’ worth?

I have programmed in Basic on a TRS-80… I think that makes me old.

punchcards …. need I say more?

“I miss having to backspace thru a gazillion characters because I mistyped the 4th one” said nobody ever! And I LOVED playing with DOS, LOL.

C:\

When my father started, there were NO switches, just jumper boards, where you moved the jumpers for what you wanted the “computers” to do. You could use that computer til the vacuum tubes got too hot, thus the reason for the air conditioning. It was not for the employees, but to keep the computer cool.

DOS is still there…check out its home in command prompt.

DOS? How about CPM?

Computer magazines had columns with DOS batch files that were actual programs. They were insanely complicated and borderline incomprehensible because DOS commands weren’t designed for that. Batch files made UNIX commands and scripts seem simple and straightforward. Minis and mainframes had better scripting.

I loved cheating on early DOS computer games because I could read the code, figure out where to go to max character stats, boost treasures, special objects, etc. and fly thru the games. Especially if I was having problems with certain sections. :o) I also had endless lives.

Hey!!! Somebody I can relate to!!!! I miss the good ol’ days…

If modern programmers paid as much attention to memory management as programmers had to in the past, programs would run a lot faster. Of course, it was also easier to write buggy code that failed to do memory management and crashed because of it back then…

I kind of miss DOS and command lines and all that. You knew what was what. Programs were small and simple.

IF dos equals ‘I remember when,’ THEN laptop must be a teenage whippersnapper.

Ol’ PC had to get the same from his dad, about his punchcards and his whirling reel to reel tapes

I remember coding with Basic on the Trash 80.

Hey young pad(awan) let me show you what “Reset to default” means.

My first computer was a quantum computer. We’d chisel the code onto stone tablets and give the tablet to a trained pterodactyl who would then fly off into another Universe where the processing would take place. A different pterodactyl (which was actually the same one just super-positioned and entangled) would return with the results on printer paper. Of course, back then, we didn’t know what printer paper was…

most of the kids to day have no idea of what dos is or even CPM.